1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a programming method for creating a program for a robot movement and a programming apparatus for carrying out the method, and more particularly to a programming method and apparatus for performing a robot operation on workpieces having a common shape and different dimension.
2. Description of the Related Art
Industrial robots have been widely used for automating and laborsaving in the manufacturing processes. A movement of an industrial robot, particularly, a predetermined path to be traced by the tip point of a tool held by the robot is, on many occasions, determined in accordance with the shape and dimension of a workpiece which is an object of the robot operation. The object of the robot operation is seldom limited to one kind of workpieces of the same shape and the same size. On many occasions, the robot operation of an identical or similar movement sequence is carried out on a plurality of kinds of workpieces having the same shape or common shape elements and different partly or entirely in dimension.
For workpieces having the same shape or common shape elements and different in dimension, it is conventional to create a whole program or a part of program relating to teaching position data. Consequently, time for teaching and programming operation increases to cause an obstruction in improving the efficiency of operation.
It is an object of this invention to improve the efficiency of teaching operation of a robot when workpieces as an object of the robot operation have a common shape and an operation sequence.
According to the present invention, there is provided a robot movement programming method comprising the steps of: creating at least one sample program for specifying sequence patterns of movement of the robot; defining parameters representing geometric quantities for the respective sequence patterns specified by the created sample program; defining conversion formulas for obtaining position data of teaching points for determining the movement path using the parameters; determining the sequence of the robot movement by selecting one from the created sequence patterns; determining values of the parameters in the conversion formulas defined for the selected sequence pattern; calculating the teaching point position data with respect to the determined movement sequence, by software means based on the conversion formulas and the parameter values; and obtaining a robot movement program based on the calculated teaching point position data.
Alternatively, in the above step of determining the robot movement sequence, at least one sequence pattern may be selected from the created sequence patterns and the robot sequence may be determined by editing the selected at least one sequence pattern.
Further, the above steps of calculating the teaching point position data and obtaining a robot movement program based on the calculated teaching point position data are carried out by a robot control device or an information processing device external of the robot control device.
The present invention also provides an apparatus for carrying out the above-mentioned programming method.